The article highlights the big man's collaborative brew with Dogfish Head brewery's lauded Sam Calagione, who also co-owns Birreria with Batali. The beer's ingredients, likened to a prison wine, included "overripe tomatoes, rotten grapefruit, Ugli fruit (a type of tangelo), stale bread, and Demerara sugar," according to the piece. It says the recipe was based on a German hefeweizen, and the brew was cask-conditioned, released to very positive reviews.

The inspiration came via wastED, conceived by chef Dan Barber, author of The Third Plate (a fantastic book which I happen to be in the middle of reading right now), and the Civil Eats article concludes with Batali and Calagione saying they aim to brew their food-waste beer annually in both Chicago and New York "to promote the wastED awareness."

I'd also mentioned Batali in Simplicity last year, in relation to his pitch for the Green Restaurant Association, which tackles many other aspects of sustainability inside the eatery industry. Commercial composting of food scraps that can't be eaten also has a huge impact on the environment, as Rasta Pasta will attest locally.

Before I share some extra photos from my ride and dinner with Colorado Springs Food Rescue, I'm posting this challenge to our bounty of local breweries and CSFR — just for fun: collaborate to make us a cool food waste beer. Maybe a portion of proceeds go to CSFR, and the brewery otherwise gets bragging rights? Who's up for the task? I'm down to document it all.